Before you begin

Monetization depends on Edge. However, Edge does not initially include the monetization API or integrate monetization into the management UI. You need to purchase the monetization feature to incorporate the monetization API and the monetization UI components into Edge.

An Apigee Edge account provides you with:

An organization

A username

A password

You use these credentials to login to enterprise.apigee.com. This exposes the Edge API Services APIs and the Edge management UI.

After you purchase monetization, the Apigee configuration team will do the initial monetization setup. See What the Apigee Edge configuration team sets up for a list of actions taken by the Apigee Edge configuration team to set up monetization.

The Apigee configuration team also runs a script that synchronizes monetization with your organization and any developers, applications, and products that you created using the Edge API Services. After a period of time (such as a few months) and periodically after that, it's advisable to re-synchronize your organization with monetization, and any developers, applications, and products that you created using Edge API Services. See Synchronize Apigee Edge data with monetization for details.

What the Apigee Edge configuration team sets up

The Apigee Edge configuration team does the initial setup of monetization. Here's what they configure:

A flag that indicates whether your organization is a telecommunications company (or not).

The supported billing type for developers who purchase your rate plans, that is, prepaid and/or postpaid. A prepaid developer pays in advance for the use of your API products. Funds are deducted from a prepaid developer's balance when the API product is used. A postpaid developer is billed monthly (through an invoice) for the use of your API products. If you want the Apigee configuration team to set up both billing types, you need to identify to the team your default billing type.

The tax engine configuration (if you plan to use monetization for billing documents).

The billing run scheduler (only if you plan to use monetization for billing documents, and only if you want to auto-schedule bill runs rather than run them manually). Learn more about the scheduler and scheduled jobs in Schedule monetization jobs.

The detailed or summary file extraction process for integration with other systems (if this is a requirement). You need to notify the Apigee Configuration Team whether you want detailed or summary data extracted from monetization into your accounting system and the data format required by your accounting system.

Email reply address configuration: For monetization email notifications that are sent to companies and developers, a default noreply@apigee.com address is configured. You must ask Apigee to configure a custom reply name and address for your organization.

Configure billing documents. The configuration provides some basic information such as the country in which you’re registered for tax purposes (this allows monetization to generate the applicable taxes on invoices and other billing documents).

Create a transaction recording policy for each of your API products. The transaction recording policy defines what you would like to capture in the transaction records for an API product, including any custom attributes.

Use the management UI or Edge API Services APIs to create API products if you haven't already done so. For further details, see Creating an API product.

Create API packages that you want to monetize for sale to developers. Each API package groups one or more API products.

You can create API packages before you create transaction recording policies for API products, or you can create API packages after you create transaction policies. Monetization does not mandate the order in which you perform these actions.

Create rate plans for each API package. You can set up standard rate plans, rate plans for developer categories, or developer-specific rate plans. After you create rate plans, you can publish them for viewing by developers or save them as drafts (see Publish rate plans).

Assign categories to your developers (as applicable). By creating categories and assigning developers to them, you can create rate plans that apply to specific groups, or categories, of developers.

Extract files to other systems for accounting (and billing if you don't use monetization for billing). This depends on the extraction process for integration with other systems that the Apigee Edge configuration team created in the initial configuration.